Re: Charlie Gibson Hits Obama On His Donors   [Mark Steyn]

Oh, please, Greg. That’s not a “hit”, that’s a Swedish massage by Princess Fluffy Bunny. That’s Charlie Gibson appearing to cover himself while letting Obama get away with mush. A (Palin-style?) hit would have taken the conversation on a quite different tack:

OBAMA: What I would simply point to is that the way we have raised this money has been by expanding the pool of small donors in this country in an unprecedented way.

INFORMED GIBSON QUESTION: What’s unprecedented is that, unlike John McCain, your website disabled the standard credit-card security system used by almost all reputable online retailers. Why did you do that? And, given that of the record $150 million you raised in September two-thirds was raised under this systemically corrupted Internet operation, isn’t it likely that a significant proportion of your half-hour infomercial was paid for by fraudulent donors? And, as to “expanding the pool of small donors in this country”, what about the way you’ve expanded the pool of donors in other countries who’ve been able to make illegal contributions to your campaign because you switched off the AVS security checks?

OBAMA: I mean, you’re looking the people who are giving $5, 10, 25. Ordinary folks who have gotten impassioned about this campaign in a way that is unprecedented. And that, really, is…

INFORMED GIBSON QUESTION: Also a lot of extraordinary folks have gotten impassioned about your campaign. You’ve received contributions from, among others, a Mr Saddam Hussein, Mr A Hitler and Mr K Marx? How do you propose to return those contributions given that all three “donors” are deceased?

OBAMA: Look, you know, 3.1 million donors would be a pretty hard thing for us to be able to process…

INFORMED GIBSON QUESTION:  Why? I mean, you’ve had no problem “processing” the money, have you? And, if you hadn’t monkeyed with the standard online retail data system, all you have to do is press a button and 3.1 million names and addresses pop right up. Ask Amazon. So why did you switch it off? And, if you yourself did not make that decision, who did?

The Senator terminates the interview to instruct an aide to have state and local officials look into this guy Gibson’s child-support payments, tax liens, etc. Later, it emerges that Charlie the Anchor is not even a state-licensed interviewer.

This morning I heard someone - I think it may be have been Megyn Kelly on Fox News – talking about people buying prepaid credit or debit cards (which have no name or address associated with them) and using those to donate as much as they wish, since Obama’s campaign turned off the credit card security measures on their website.

Who knows how many millions have been collected illegally and/or improperly?  The whole thing stinks, and even though Obama will not agree to release a list of his donors, or turn the online security stop gaps back on, not one mainstream/network media outlet (other than Fox) seems to give a damn. 

Over half of the $426.9 million Obama has raised has come from small donors whose names the Obama campaign won’t disclose.  (McCain has made his complete donor database available online, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP)).

 Federal law does not require campaigns to identify donors who give less than $200, but it does require reported running totals for each donor once they go beyond the $200 mark.   

 The FEC breakdown of the Obama campaign has identified a staggering $222.7 million as coming from contributions of $200 or less. (Only $39.6 million comes from identified donors.)

It is the largest pool of unidentified money that has ever flooded into the U.S. election system…

And shennanigans have been discovered:  for example, donors with fake names giving small amounts that far exceed the $2,300 limit for single persons.  In one case, over 1,000 charges of $25 or less came from a donor named “Good Will.”  Total credit card charges:  over $17,000. 

Another donor (”Doodad Pro”) gave $19,500 in 786 separate donations, most of them for $25.

AND

The FEC has compiled a separate database of potentially questionable overseas donations that contains more than 11,500 contributions totaling $33.8 million. More than 520 listed their “state” as “IR,” often an abbreviation for Iran.

More than 1,400 of the overseas entries clearly were U.S. diplomats or military personnel, who gave an APO address overseas. Their total contributions came to just $201,680.

There are a lot of specifics and examples in the story, including instances where the Obama camp was caught in specific wrongdoing and had to agree to return money and discussions about some of the foreign donations.  (The campaign is still under investigation.)

I strongly encourage people to read the Newsmax story – and forward this link.